


Madman Without A Box

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Abuse of Italics function, Character Insert, Character Study, Excessive quoting, M/M, The God Complex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 09:51:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1300588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He’s a Time Lord like me, except-”<br/>“Except I’m much more fun,” the Master interrupted, grinning wickedly at the ginger girl.</p><p>Back from the dead (again) the Master goes in search of the Doctor, seeking to escape the silence left behind by the absence of the drumming. Finding him in a 1980's earth hotel replica battling a Minotaur with a God Complex, he's rather baffled by what's become of him.<br/>Once he gets past the bow-tie and excessive talking, however, he finds that this might be the first incarnation of the Doctor he truly understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madman Without A Box

**Author's Note:**

> Entry for FANDOMS UNITE competition for the Doctor Who fandom.  
> Never written for this fandom or in this style before. Largely inspired by 'Elevenses' by bluestalking and 'And Other Things That Never Happened' by tabulaxrasa - I'd advise you go check them out if you like this pairing, both fics are b-e-a-uutiful. 
> 
> Set during 'The God Complex' and steals many a quote from there. Essentially a tribute to that episode, and the Doctor and Master that never met.

 

~  
Being brilliant, the Master rarely stayed dead for long.  
  
Of course he was always going to come back. It was simply what he did, although naturally, it was never simple. As the Doctor had stated, the Master was _brilliant_. Subsequently, his resurrections tended to be exceedingly brilliant too.

This time though, it wasn’t the ‘how’ that mattered. The problem lay in dealing with the aftereffects. 

Having spent his dying days eating people to stay alive, turning into a skeleton every now and then, and shooting lightning bolts from his hands, the Master was expecting the same again upon awakening. Being reborn to find his body fully functional and his craving for human flesh subdued to a minimum, however, he felt strangely unnerved by his own normality. He missed having a good excuse for a psychotic breakdown. And that didn’t even begin to address the absence of the drumming.   
  
Staggering around in the darkness of the underground facility he’d been revived in, he couldn’t wrap his head around it. Where was the drumming? Certainly, he now knew the cause, knew that he wasn’t _mad_ , but that didn’t mean he’d expected it all just to vanish once the connection with the Time Lords had been severed. Alone, save for the corpses of those foolish enough to have brought him back, the Master couldn’t escape the quiet.

Silence. Perfect, unbroken silence.   

It made him want to destroy something: loudly. He wanted to jump around, hit, rip, tear, and smash, _sinking_ his teeth into whatever he could find. Anything to break the unfamiliar, terrible silence.

Fortunately that urge told him exactly what he needed to do to smother the suffocating quiet, random acts of vandalism aside. Or, to be more precise, it told him exactly who he needed to find.

“Doctor,” he hissed, a wide-eyed manic smile spreading across his lips.

The underground facility within which he now found himself was in fact the home of several alien-technology hoarders. Like most humans who helped bring him back, they’d been under the delusional impression that they could exploit _him_ , the Master, to their advantage. Still, their insolent lifestyles meant that he was now surrounded by the salvage of a hundred worlds, providing a wealthy supply of spare parts.  
  
Within ten minutes he’d designed and created his very own stalking device, with a working teleport function built in, constructed from the scraps surrounding him. Syncing it to the Doctor wasn’t difficult. Together they were the only two remaining Time Lords, a connection that provided an enduring psychic link. Finding one another had never been a problem.

Smiling at his own ingenuity, the Master strapped the clunky device to his arm as if it were a mere wristwatch, and then twisted the dial on the clock face. He vanished in an instant.   

~

Upon materialising wherever the device had sent him, the Master observed his new surroundings. For some sick, twisted reason he appeared to have arrived in a 1980’s earth hotel. The décor was suitably appalling for the era, the wallpaper atrocious and the yellow doors blinding, and playing overhead was typically grating hotel music. Yet despite the accuracy, the location was definitely false. The craftsmanship was impressive, but it was still not a real 1980’s earth hotel.

Why someone would choose to recreate such a monstrosity he couldn’t say – and they said _he_ was mad - but more to the point, he had no idea what the Doctor could be doing there. Getting into trouble as usual he supposed.   

However, before he could get bored, a reception bell rung out from somewhere in the distance, the light ‘ _ding_ ’ beckoning him closer. As he navigated down the corridors towards it, he heard shouting break out and grinned. It sounded like exactly what he needed.

Meeting a set of stairs carpeted in red, the Master crept down them, listening to the voices floating up from beneath.  
“The walls move. Everything changes,” one voice said. It was nervous, a stutter carefully ironed out, deep in pitch: young adult male, reclusive.  
“You, clever one. What’s he talking about?” A new voice demanded briskly, expecting without question to be obeyed. Someone I’d like to _break_ , thought the Master.

“The corridors twist and stretch. Rooms vanish and pop up somewhere else. It’s like the hotel’s alive.” Another new voice: female, raised in England, masking insecurity well.

The horrific hotel music was switched off. “That’s quite enough of that,” decided the arrogant voice.

Before anyone else could add another pointless observation, the Master reached the bottom of the stairs, drawing into view. Six individuals were gathered there in the hotel reception, three on one side armed with everyday objects, and the other three stood on the other, unarmed. Five humans, one rat-faced inhabitant of Tivoli. Wait, scratch that, four humans, one Time Lord. The Master could smell him, sense him in the room, and yet he recognised none of them.

“Gone and died again already, Doctor?” He remarked dryly, giving his usual smirk. He refused to acknowledge that some small part of him was mildly disappointed. He’d been quite fond of the Doctor’s past incarnation, with all his flirting and desperation. Not only that but he’d been great fun to wind up. How _angry_ he became. It made the Master shiver with delight just thinking about it.

The man with the foppish hair and an equally ridiculous fashion sense was staring at him, quickly giving away his identity as the new Doctor, number eleven. Gone was the excessive lankiness, the spiked up hair, and the pinstripe suit, replaced by the floppy hair of a teenager, suspenders, and a bowtie. This was exactly why the Doctor needed the Master around, to prevent any real disasters. Bowties were definitely in that category.  

“You look awful,” he said cheerfully, grinning widely at having found his prize. “Please tell me this is part of a disguise.”

It took this new Doctor a few moments to process his presence in the room, and even then his response was simply to open and close his mouth, words failing to come out. Fortunately the redheaded girl in the short skirt spoke for him.  
“Doctor, who is this?” She asked with a distinct Scottish accent. The Master was rather affronted by how she was regarding him, as if he were an entirely unwelcome addition to an already sticky situation. _He_ was supposed to be the situation. He hoped that the Doctor hadn’t already found something to upstage him with.

Prompted into functioning by the question, the new Doctor took a few steps towards the stairs, his walk a sort of running lope. The Master sincerely hoped that this childish act was a joke. “This is the Master,” the Doctor said, his voice revealing him to be the arrogant one who had spoken earlier. Well, now the Master would be honoured to break him. “He’s a Time Lord like me, except-”  
“Except I’m much more fun,” the Master interrupted, grinning wickedly at the ginger girl.

He hopped down from the last step and held his arms out, the manic smile still present. “Honey, I’m home. Did you miss me?” He said. The Doctor just frowned at him, his goofy face contorted, seeming childishly confused. Honestly, what was wrong with this new Doctor? Where was the terror, the anger, the accusations? 

“How did you get here?” The Doctor asked. At least he’d learnt by now not to ask how he’d been resurrected.

Holding up his wrist, the Master gave the teleporter a tap. “Followed you, Doctor dearest. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Completely unexpectedly, the Doctor smiled at him. It was the Master’s turn to look confused.  
“Oh, just a mysterious shape-shifting hotel with terrified armed humans running about in it. Nothing unusual,” the Doctor said airily, still smiling. It was a very strange smile, like he felt that he and the Master were sharing some sort of private joke, and it was far more intimate than he was used to. Where was the pain in his eyes, the sadness in his heart? What good was childish friendliness to the Master? As if he could shut out the silence, the encroaching absence of the drumming, with that.

Gritting his teeth, the Master knew what he had to do. He had to _push_.  
  
~

“Have you tried the door?” Rory, the human with the prominent nose, asked. The Master rolled his eyes.  
“No. In two days it never occurred to us to try the front door. Thank God you’re here,” said the dark-skinned English girl Rita, quirking an eyebrow as she spoke. The Master liked her.

Springing across the room like a hyper child, the Doctor swung open the front doors, revealing only more wall to be contained behind them. “They’re not doors, they’re walls. Walls that look like doors. Door-walls, if you like, or dwalls. Woors even, though you’d probably got it when you said they’re not doors. I mean, the windows are-” Just as he went to open the curtains of the windows, the Master cut him off.

“What happened to you?” He asked dully, leant against the stair bannister, his hands shoved in his hoodie pocket. He had no problem with showing his disappointment in his expression, scowling at the doctor. “Did the tragedy of my death cause you to revert back to a state of childhood? No, that can’t be it; you weren’t this much of an idiot back then.” A smile then perked up his lips. “The days of the Academy were fun. You were good back then.”    

To the Master’s joy, the Doctor blushed in response, glancing about nervously. Admittedly the awkward teenager act worked here, making him rather brilliant to tease. “Although I must say, the things we did back then were hardly the games of _children_ -”

“So, it’s a big day if you’re a fan of walls,” the Doctor concluded quickly, cutting him off as swiftly as possible.

Then the Doctor went back to being ridiculous and boring again, but it didn’t matter. The Master had received his first taste of blood. It didn’t matter that the drums were gone and that he was trapped in silence, so long as he could make the Doctor _squirm_. The flushed cheeks were only a chaste lick of the thrill he craved, and he fully intended to gorge himself on the Doctor and his pain. He just had to work out how this new shiny model ticked.

~

A whole lot of running, praising, and terror later, the Doctor was pacing back and forth and smashing things. Rita had just been taken by the Minotaur that inhabited the fake hotel, and apparently he’d liked her too. In contrast, the Master was sat up on a counter quite calmly watching as plate after plate was smashed. The role reversal unsettled him slightly, but he wasn’t worried. True, he hadn’t been the situation that day, but it had all been fun.

Sprinting this way and that, feeling his muscles gasp for oxygen, watching on as those around him slowly went insane whilst he himself pretended to be fine; He could understand why the Doctor did it all on such a regular basis, _saving people_. The adrenaline rush was nearly as thrilling as that obtained through slaughtering them. It made for a pleasant momentary change.

Admittedly, this new Doctor was growing on the Master. The old version would have vented his frustration verbally, with quick, clever words, and a grand plan all at the end of it. This one was throwing things. In the past few hours, he’d shown that he had no problem with using words in rapid succession, all very clever and witty, but now he was only muttering as he hurled this and that across the room. Every other Doctor, the Master had understood in a second. This one was different from the others.

Something had snapped.

~

Amelia Pond, the ginger fairy-tale princess, had found her room and was praising him, the Minotaur, for all she was worth. Behind her, sat on her little suitcase in her little red wellies, was little Amelia Pond, staring out the window, waiting. She wore the same expression that the Master had seen on every one of the Doctor’s companions, one of helpless awe, a faith that was so hopeful it pained them.  
  
“Doctor, it’s happening. It’s changing me. It’s changing my thoughts,” Amy, the real one, whispered, collapsed on the floor before her younger self.

“I can’t save you from this,” the Doctor said, knelt beside Amy, her head cradled in his hands. “There’s nothing I can do to stop this.”

For a moment the Master was startled by what was happening. He’d never heard the Doctor admit to being powerless before. And then he realised that something far more unbelievable was happening. He was telling his human sheep the truth. Letting them see him for what he really was.

“What?” Amy asked, unable to comprehend what he was saying.

“I stole your childhood and now I’ve led you by the hand to your death,” the Doctor said quietly, giving her a sad, shaky smile. Amy could say nothing, and even the Master was rendered speechless. For a moment he didn’t even feel the absence of the drums, his focus no longer isolated within his own thoughts. For just a second, all he could do was stare at this new, strange, alien Doctor. 

This Doctor had listened. This Doctor had heard everything his critics had said, and taken it all to heart in silence. This Doctor was slowly burning because even though he was aware of his faults, he thought he hadn’t changed.

If only he could see what the Master saw now.

~

“An ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting through space in an endless, shifting maze,” the Doctor said, translating the dying words of the slain Minotaur. Leant back against the Tardis, the Master watched on, saying nothing. Amy and Rory watched the dying creature with sympathetic eyes, ignorant as to the true subject of its speech. The Master didn’t need to be told. He’d felt the same thing himself.

“To such a creature, death would be a gift,” the Doctor said softly. He turned to walk away, but the Minotaur said one final thing. “I wasn’t talking about myself.”

The last time the Master had met the Doctor, with his lanky body and his spiky hair, he’d been petrified of dying. He wanted nothing more than to cling to his illusion of a permanent life, to stay _him_. The Master had found it entertaining, but could never summon the same deep-rooted passion for the mundane brilliance of constant living. This one he could understand.

And yet neither of them could bring themselves to die. He wondered why that was.

“Because you are just an instinct,” the Doctor had said back in the hotel, translating once again for the Minotaur. Talking for the Minotaur, who wasn’t talking about himself.

His wild passion for destruction quelled for a moment, the Master stood and thought about that. He hoped it wasn’t true.

“Strange isn’t it, how this prison has ended so many lives keeping one mere criminal alive,” the Master noted loudly, watching the Doctor still. “Makes you wonder why. Why not just let it die?”

“It wasn’t bad,” Amy said softly, knelt beside the corpse, her hand touching its leathery skin tenderly. “Not really.”

“It sought to be adored,” the Doctor said, still with his back turned on the creature. “And it didn’t care what happened as a result.”

“But it told you to kill it,” Amy pointed out, glancing up at him. “It didn’t want to hurt anyone any more.”

“Certainly, it cared,” the Master said with a sigh and a shuffle. “It just didn’t know how to do any different.”  

~

Having returned to earth – the real earth, not some hellish 1980’s hotel simulated earth - the four of them, the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and the Master, were stood outside the married couple’s new house. “So, you’re leaving now, aren’t you?” Amy guessed, squinting at the Doctor. He replied with his usual defence mechanism of a witty remark that side-stepped the question. At least it made the both of them, the Master and Amy, laugh.

“Why now?”

“Because you’re still breathing,” the Doctor answered honestly. The badly masked pain in his voice was why the Master didn’t _do_ companions. They always died, in the end.

When the Doctor and Amy pulled out of their last hug goodbye, he turned and approached the Tardis, against which the Master had positioned himself. “What about me, Doctor?” The Master asked, emphasising the two separate syllables of his title. Weren’t defence mechanisms such fun? Now they both had too many to count.

“You’re coming with me,” the Doctor answered, quiet now, the sentimentality from his farewell lingering.

“And what if _I_ stop breathing?” The Master teased, miming choking with a great deal of theatricality. At least it made the Doctor smile.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he replied, shaking his head with its floppy hair and opening the Tardis door.

Upon stepping inside, the Master witnessed the redecoration and snorted, unable to believe what had become of the poor ship. “Could your control panel get any dorkier?” He asked, nodding to the vast display of geeky gadgets, accessories, and retro-style buttons that littered the ship's mainframe. It looked like it had been designed by an intoxicated three-year old that wanted everything in the store.

“He doesn’t mean it. You’re beautiful,” the Doctor assured his Tardis, stroking the control panel lovingly.

Stepping up onto the deck, the master shoved his hands back in his hoodie pocket and looked straight at the Doctor. “The drums have gone,” he told him, serious for just a moment.

The Doctor looked up at him with those sad, blue eyes, and yet he didn’t look surprised. “I guessed that they had,” he confessed, dropping his gaze back to the panel. “You seem calmer.”

“I don’t feel calmer,” the Master hissed through gritted teeth, springing forward in a jerky action just to prove his point. “I feel like I’m breaking. I want to destroy something, fast.”  
  
The Doctor said nothing for a moment, and then smiled. “That’s what I’m here for,” he answered, flicking some stupid contraption on his panel.

The Master didn’t know whether the Doctor intended the statement to mean that he was there so that he could stop the Master, or so that he could be destroyed by him. Suicidal tendencies seemed to be unusually prevalent that day, so each seemed likely. Either way, the Master felt that by the end of this journey, they were both going to end up disintegrating together. Then maybe the drums would truly stop.

The Master grinned. “Brilliant. Let’s do it.”   

 

 

 

 


End file.
